The Polite Tourist: Four Centuries of Country House Visiting

by Adrian Tinniswood

Book Overview

Country house visiting is one of Britain's favorite leisure activities. For more than five centuries, historic buildings have opened their doors, inviting the tourist to step inside. Elizabethans... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0810963728
• ISBN13: 9780810963726
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: ABRAMS
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 2.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 9.0" x 10.0"

Customer Reviews

Great reading for the "stately home" fan

Tourism in Britain started with pilgrims seeking out the tomb of Thomas ? Becket at Canterbury, expanded with a renaissance of topographers and antiquarians poking into odd corners of the country, and broadened again with the arrival of foreign visitors in London on the Continental Grand Tour. But the heart of this lovely book is the practice in the 18th and 19th centuries by owners of stately homes of allowing visitors to inspect the premises when they (the owners) were not in residence. (Think Elizabeth Bennett's first encounter with Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice.) The Victorians also loved mysterious and romantic locations like Stonehenge and the Roman baths at Bath, and they loved to listen to (and frequently accept uncritically) the bizarre legends associated with them. (No, Julius Caesar did not build the White Tower!) Like all books I've read that were published by the National Trust (without which most of these tax-heavy properties would probably have been torn down decades ago), half the enjoyment is in the hundred-plus illustrations and the seventy color plates. A beautifully produced addition to English social history.